A night among the refugees

Life in the embattled refugee camp of Jenin is one of fear and conflicting stories.

By Ferry Biedermann

Apr 15, 2002 | Spending just one night in this city under curfew, as a Western journalist with the freedom to eventually leave, gives at least a sense of what it's like to feel under siege. It's to live in a city patrolled by tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs), which lumber through the streets and fire gun blasts as tens of thousands of people remain confined to their homes without electricity, water or phone service, or much food or medicine.

In Jenin, most people have been subjected to this way of life for more than 10 days, and especially traumatized are the survivors of the assault on the Jenin refugee camp.

It is still unclear what exactly happened during the assault on the Palestinian fighters in the refugee camp. There are widely conflicting stories about the number killed and the manner in which they died. There have been allegations of a massacre that have been strenuously denied by the Israeli army. It is known that 23 Israeli soldiers died during the fighting, but on Monday, the Israeli army itself claimed that reports of hundreds of Palestinian deaths were wrong, and that they had only verified 45 dead.

Whatever the numbers turn out to be, the Israeli assault will have created a whole new generation of fighters for the Palestinian cause. Newly battle-scarred children still cower in the town of Jenin, while the Israelis maintain their tight grip over the city.

"Don't run, they may shoot, just walk," says Jabr on Saturday, a volunteer at the Jenin Charitable Center where some 800 refugees have found shelter. He moves into a near-slapstick speed-walking mode to get away from two Israeli APCs and a tank that have come out of nowhere and are rumbling toward us. The people who felt a certain measure of safety in the streets around the center scramble to get inside the building. A fellow reporter gets trapped in a garage across the street with a terrified young Palestinian boy, Addas. The Israelis stop right next to the center and fire off a few rounds with their machine guns, at no particular targets.

Inside the center, Dr. Jamil Al-Hamad of the Palestinian Medical Relief Committees desperately tries to cope with the influx of refugees, and speculates that the Israelis decided to put a stop to the traffic to and from the building. "Many people in town hear that we have some food and medicine, so the ones who dare, brave the curfew to come and get some supplies." The center has so far received two shipments of food, bottled water and drugs from the outside.

In his small office, with a variety of drugs set out on one table, Al-Hamad serves as doctor, administrator and sympathetic ear for the distraught refugees. Apart from some over-the-counter painkillers, he mostly hands out blankets, one to place on the floor and sleep on and one to use as a cover. "The biggest problem we face, though, is water. It just means the hygiene situation is getting very bad," he said. "Yesterday we received some cases of bottled water and instead of drinking it, some people used it to wash."

Outside, as the sun sets, the Israelis occasionally move positions and let off some more gunfire. The refugees, mostly women, children and old men, get audibly upset at every volley; some people dive to the ground and others wail and curse. Says Al-Hamad: "The people here are not only tired, hungry and thirsty, most have also lost everything and they are traumatized by the things they have seen. We cannot really provide all the care here, and now there's shooting again outside, which doesn't help."

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